April 22

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (April 22, 1776).

“GOOD BOHEA TEA, to be sold … agreeable to order of the Honorable Continental Congress.”

Advertisements for tea returned to Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet on April 22, 1776, after having disappeared for a while due to the prohibition on selling and consuming tea.  In a brief advertisement, Ezekiel Brown announced, “GOOD BOHEA TEA, to be sold by the subscriber, for three-fourths of a dollar per pound, agreeable to order of the Honorable Continental Congress.”  He did not elaborate on the details; instead, he expected readers knew the history of tea during the political crisis and how it became the most politicized commodity in the colonies.

Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (April 15, 1776).

In response to the Intolerable Acts and other abuses perpetrated by Parliament, the First Continental Congress devised the Continental Association, a nonimportation, nonconsumption, and nonexportation agreement, in the fall of 1774.  The first article concerned a general boycott of imported goods, while the third article addressed consuming tea: “we will not purchase or use any Tea imported on Account of the East India Company, or any on which a Duty hath been or shall be paid; and, from and after the first day of March [1775], we will not purchase or use any East India Tea whatever.”  The Second Continental Congress reconsidered some aspects of that third article and passed a new resolution on April 13, 1776.  Two days later, Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet carried the resolution along with other news.  It came to the attention of the Second Continental Congress that some “zealous friends to the American cause” had imported “large quantities” of tea in an effort “to counteract the plan then pursued by the Ministry and India Company, to introduce and sell in these Colonies, Tea subject to duty.”  In other words, they stocked up on tea before Parliament and the East India Company could put their plan into effect, doing so as acts of resistance rather than merely “to advance their fortunes.”  Now, however, they stood to become “great suffers” because of their investment in tea, “incapable, not only of paying their debts and maintaining their families, but also of vigorously exerting themselves in the service of their Country.”  According to the new resolution, the First Continental Congress intended that “all India Tea, which had been imported agreeable to the tenor of said Association, might be sold and consumed,” but the March 1, 1775, deadline did not allow enough time for that to happen.  Accordingly, the Second Continental Congress passed a new resolution that “all India Tea imported as aforesaid, expressly excepting all Teas imported by, or on account of the East India Company, now remaining on hand in these Colonies, be sold and used.”  Even though advertisements for tea ceased for a while, colonizers never stopped consuming it in secret.  The new resolution allowed them to drink tea without subterfuge.

It also allowed for the selling of tea, yet it introduced some restrictions since “some Tea-holders may be tempted to avail themselves of the scarcity … and exact exorbitant prices.”  In another resolution, the Second Continental Congress set price controls: “Bohea Tea ought not to be sold … at a higher price in any Colony than at the rate of three fourths of a dollar per pound; and other Teas at such price as shall be regulated by the Committees of the town or county, where the tea is sold.”  That resolution also instructed “all Committees of Inspection and Observation … to be vigilant” in overseeing the sale of tea now that it was allowed once again and to discipline “enemies to the American cause” who engaged in price gouging.

For his part, Brown set the price for his “GOOD BOHEA TEA” at “three-fourths of a dollar per pound, agreeable to the order of the Honorable Continental Congress.”  He placed his advertisement as quickly as possible.  The Second Continental Congress passed the resolution on April 13.  It appeared in Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet on April 15.  Brown, who gave his location only as “New-Jersey,” likely saw it in that issue and immediately composed his advertisement, dated April 17.  It ran in the next issue of Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet, published once a week, on April 22.  Brown was ready to sell tea in the open (but according to the rules) and he believed that consumers would purchase it once they knew he made it available to them.

Slavery Advertisements Published April 22, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (April 22, 1776).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (April 22, 1776).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (April 22, 1776).

Advertisements for Common Sense Published April 22, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Special Features

Historians consider Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, published anonymously on January 9, 1776, the most influential political pamphlet that circulated in the colonies during the era of the American Revolution.  Written in plain language accessible to readers of all backgrounds, the pamphlet made a bold case for declaring independence at a time that many colonizers still sought a redress their grievances by George III and Parliament.  Paine’s pamphlet played a vital role in swaying public opinion in favor of declaring independence.

Common Sense was an eighteenth-century bestseller, though Paine wildly overestimated how many copies were published, claiming 150,000 circulated in 1776, and historians later made even more dubious claims that American printing presses produced as many as 500,000 copies.  Contrary to those exaggerations, American printers most likely published between 35,000 and 50,000 copies in 1776.  Scholars have identified twenty-five American editions, more than twice as many as any other American book or pamphlet published in the eighteenth century.

Colonizers certainly discussed Paine’s pamphlet … and printers, booksellers, and others advertised it widely.  As a special feature, the Adverts 250 Project chronicles those advertisements, starting with newspaper notices for Robert Bell’s first edition published in Philadelphia and then subsequent advertisements for that and other editions published and sold throughout the colonies.

These advertisements for Common Sense appeared in American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Boston-Gazette (April 22, 1776).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (April 22, 1776).

April 21

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago this week?

Providence Gazette (April 20, 1776).

“Rasins by the Cask, Cocoa, Coffee, Chocolate, [and] Cinnamon.”

In the spring of 1776, the partnership of Clark and Nightingale advertised a variety of commodities available “At their Store in Providence, by Wholesale and Retail.”  Their inventory included “Muscovado Sugar, Rasins by the Cask, Cocoa, Coffee, Chocolate, [and] Cinnamon.”  Among the beverages they listed, tea was conspicuously absent.  That popular beverage had been so thoroughly politicized that it disappeared from newspaper advertisements.

Does this explain the rise of coffee as the more popular beverage in America?  Historian Michelle Craig McDonald, author of Coffee Nation: How One Commodity Transformed the Early United States, cautions that we should not be too hasty in reaching that conclusion.  Yes, the Tea Act angered colonizers to the point that members of the Sons of Liberty disguised as Indigenous Americans dumped tea into Boston Harbor in December 1773 and residents of cities and towns throughout the colonies gathered for the ritual destruction of their own tea in bonfires.  That could have been the opening for coffee to eclipse tea in popularity.  For a time, coffee did become a substitute for tea.  McDonald relays a story of an innkeeper refusing to serve tea to John Adams but instead offering him coffee in July 1774.[1]  Yet she also cautions, as she did in a presentation at the American Antiquarian Society, that coffee eventually became a prohibited item enumerated in nonimportation agreements.  The first article of the Continental Association, a nonimportation agreement devised by the First Continental Congress that went into effect on December 1, 1774, specified that the colonizers “will not import into British America … any Molosses, Syrups, Paneles, Coffee, or Pimenta, from the British Plantations” in the Caribbean.  McDonald asserts that “by 1775, coffee had become a political liability in its own right.”[2]

Yet coffee, unlike tea, did not disappear from newspapers advertisements.  It seemingly did not have the same political valence as tea.  In addition, as McDonald explains, “privateering stepped into the breach” by the time Clark and Nightingale advertised that they sold coffee.[3]  Loopholes allowed colonizers to enjoy the beverage.  In general, consumers never completely abstained from consuming tea or coffee.  Too much evidence demonstrates that they continued to drink both beverages even though they pretended otherwise.  Yet the notoriety associated with tea meant that it stopped appearing alongside coffee in advertisements.  Despite the boycott, readers still saw coffee listed alongside other commodities.

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[1] Michelle Criag McDonald, Coffee Nation: How One Commodity Transformed the Early United States (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025),115.

[2] Coffee Nation, 115.

[3] Coffee Nation, 117.

April 20

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Pennsylvania Evening Post (April 20, 1776).

“OBSERVATIONS on the RECONCILIATION of GREAT-BRITAIN and the COLONIES … ARGUMENTS for and against.”

As colonizers marked the first anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1776, they debated the purpose of the war.  When it began, most wanted a redress of grievances within the imperial system, just as they had sought in response to the Stamp Act in 1765 and 1766 and the Townshend Acts in the late 1760s.  Yet as the war continued, more and more colonizers determined that it was no longer possible nor desirable to return to their position within the British Empire before the imperial crisis began.  The publication and widespread dissemination of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense in January 1776 convinced many readers to support declaring independence.

Robert Bell, the bold printer who published the first edition of Common Sense, contributed to the debate by printing, advertising, and selling several political pamphlets that expressed a range of views.  For instance, he published and sold “PLAIN TRUTH … containing Remarks on a late Pamphlet intituled COMMON SENSE,” a pamphlet that argued that “permanent Liberty, and true Happiness can only be obtained by Reconciliation” with Great Britain.  For readers interested in a pamphlet that considered both sides of the issue, Bell also marketed “OBSERVATIONS on the RECONCILIATION of GREAT-BRITAIN and the COLONIES.  In which are exhibited ARGUMENTS for and against that MEASURE.  By a FRIEND of AMERICAN LIBERTY.”

When Bell’s advertisement for that pamphlet appeared in the April 20, 1776, edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post, much of the other content argued against reconciliation.  The column next to Bell’s advertisement featured a list of seven “Reasons for a DECLARATION of the INDEPENDANCE of the American Colonies” submitted by a reader.  On the final page, another item submitted by a reader outlined “The PROGRESS of an American’s CREED for obtaining a redress of grievances, and brining about a reconciliation with Great-Britain.”  That timeline mocked colonizers who consistently advocated for one more effort to restore the colonies’ relationship with George III and Parliament.  It started with the rationale given in September 1774, “I believe in the efficacy of the union of the colonies,” and continued with other milestones, including “I believe in the efficacy of Lord Chatham’s speech, and Mr. Wilke’s opposition to the court,” invoking support from politicians in Britain, in January 1775, “I believe in the efficacy of a second petition to the King,” now known as the Olive Branch Petition, in July 1775, and “I believe in the efficacy of the reduction of Chamblee, St. John’s and Montreal,” referring to the invasion of Canada, in November 1775.  The final item, dated March and April 1776, stated, “I believe in the efficacy of COMMISSIONERS coming over to redress all our grievances, and to bring about a constitutional reconciliation with Great-Britain.”  Colonizers who advocated for reconciliation, this litany suggested, snatched at false hope as they made rationalization after rationalization for not declaring independence.  No matter the political or military measures that should have worked to the colonies’ advantage, they were never enough to get the king and Parliament to reach a satisfactory settlement.  It was time to stop generating new excuses and insisting that their opponents would finally see the light and negotiate in good faith.  The correspondents who submitted these items to the Pennsylvania Evening Post did not have much use for the arguments for reconciliation presented in latest pamphlet that came off Bell’s press.

Slavery Advertisements Published April 20, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Pennsylvania Ledger (April 20, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (April 20, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (April 20, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (April 20, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (April 20, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (April 20, 1776).

Advertisements for Common Sense Published April 20, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Special Features

Historians consider Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, published anonymously on January 9, 1776, the most influential political pamphlet that circulated in the colonies during the era of the American Revolution.  Written in plain language accessible to readers of all backgrounds, the pamphlet made a bold case for declaring independence at a time that many colonizers still sought a redress their grievances by George III and Parliament.  Paine’s pamphlet played a vital role in swaying public opinion in favor of declaring independence.

Common Sense was an eighteenth-century bestseller, though Paine wildly overestimated how many copies were published, claiming 150,000 circulated in 1776, and historians later made even more dubious claims that American printing presses produced as many as 500,000 copies.  Contrary to those exaggerations, American printers most likely published between 35,000 and 50,000 copies in 1776.  Scholars have identified twenty-five American editions, more than twice as many as any other American book or pamphlet published in the eighteenth century.

Colonizers certainly discussed Paine’s pamphlet … and printers, booksellers, and others advertised it widely.  As a special feature, the Adverts 250 Project chronicles those advertisements, starting with newspaper notices for Robert Bell’s first edition published in Philadelphia and then subsequent advertisements for that and other editions published and sold throughout the colonies.

These advertisements for Common Sense appeared in American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Providence Gazette (April 20, 1776).

April 19

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Essex Journal (April 19, 1776).

“By the hundred[,] dozen or single, with good allowance to those who take a quantity.  COMMON SENSE.”

One year after the battles at Lexington and Concord that started the Revolutionary War, the first advertisement for Thomas Paine’s Common Sense appeared in the Essex Journal and New-Hampshire Packet.  John Mycall, the printer of that newspaper, prepared a local edition in Newburyport, Massachusetts, just as printers in many other cities and towns in Pennsylvania, New York, and New England had done in the three months since Robert Bell made the first edition available in Philadelphia.

This newest edition was not yet ready for sale.  Instead, Mycall announced that it was “Now in the press, and will be published in about a fortnight.”  He encouraged readers to anticipate its publication, priming the pump for distributing the popular political pamphlet within the next couple of weeks.  His advertisement replicated many that appeared in other newspapers.  He gave the title of the pamphlet, provided an overview of its contents by listing the subject headings, and gave two lines from the poem “Liberty” by Scottish poet James Thompson.  He also described his edition as “A NEW EDITION, with several Additions in the Body of the Work To which is added an APPENDIX; together with an Address to the People called QUAKERS.”  That suggested that Mycall drew the Newburyport edition from one of the expanded editions that Paine collaborated with William Bradford and Thomas Bradford in publishing in Philadelphia after the author parted ways with Bell, though the printer of the first edition pirated that bonus content when he published unauthorized subsequent editions.  A nota bene in Mycall’s advertisement, “The new Addition here given increases the Work upwards of one Third,” echoed the Bradfords’ advertisements.

To increase sales and disseminate the pamphlet widely, Mycall enlisted a local agent in Andover, and both of them sold copies “by the hundred[,] dozen or single, with good allowance to those who take a quantity.”  In other words, he gave a discount to customers who bought multiple copies.  Those who purchased a dozen may have distributed them to friends, while those who purchased “by the hundred” likely planned to sell them retail in their own shops.  The discount for volume allowed them to set competitive prices while turning a profit.  In addition, Mycall proclaimed that “the price will be as low as it can Possibly be Afforded, in Order to put so valuable a Piece into the Hands of the Poor, as well as the Rich.”  Such efforts likely helped Common Sense become the most widely read political pamphlet published in the colonies during the era of the American Revolution.

Slavery Advertisements Published April 19, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Connecticut Gazette (April 19, 1776).

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Connecticut Gazette (April 19, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (April 19, 1776).

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Supplement to the Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (April 19, 1776).

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Supplement to the Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (April 19, 1776).

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Supplement to the Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (April 19, 1776).

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Supplement to the Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (April 19, 1776).

Advertisements for Common Sense Published April 19, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Special Features

Historians consider Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, published anonymously on January 9, 1776, the most influential political pamphlet that circulated in the colonies during the era of the American Revolution.  Written in plain language accessible to readers of all backgrounds, the pamphlet made a bold case for declaring independence at a time that many colonizers still sought a redress their grievances by George III and Parliament.  Paine’s pamphlet played a vital role in swaying public opinion in favor of declaring independence.

Common Sense was an eighteenth-century bestseller, though Paine wildly overestimated how many copies were published, claiming 150,000 circulated in 1776, and historians later made even more dubious claims that American printing presses produced as many as 500,000 copies.  Contrary to those exaggerations, American printers most likely published between 35,000 and 50,000 copies in 1776.  Scholars have identified twenty-five American editions, more than twice as many as any other American book or pamphlet published in the eighteenth century.

Colonizers certainly discussed Paine’s pamphlet … and printers, booksellers, and others advertised it widely.  As a special feature, the Adverts 250 Project chronicles those advertisements, starting with newspaper notices for Robert Bell’s first edition published in Philadelphia and then subsequent advertisements for that and other editions published and sold throughout the colonies.

These advertisements for Common Sense appeared in American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Connecticut Gazette (April 19, 1776).

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Essex Journal (April 19, 1776).